


All Great and Gold Things Go

by Aspidities



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Canon Bisexual Character, Denied Feelings, Eventual Smut, F/F, Fluff and Smut, Light Angst, Non Comic-Canon, Post-Finale, Romance, Slow Burn, too much angst in this fandom already
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-12-23 23:10:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11999907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aspidities/pseuds/Aspidities
Summary: It's been years since the events of the battle of Sunnydale, and the Chosen Two are being targeted by a rogue Council agent with an eye to destroy the 'negative influence' that they've created in the new slayer generation.If Buffy could work out her old, conflicted, sexual tension-y feelings for Faith before they both get killed by a crazy former Watcher, that would be just great.





	All Great and Gold Things Go

**Author's Note:**

> Ahhh back to writing Buffy fanfic, my first love, my OG OTP. I haven't written these two in a while and it feels good, so this is going to be a simple and fun series with some (hopefully) super hot/intense slow burn leading to an ol' fashioned smut romp. Hope you enjoy! Please check out my other works: I'm also a writer for other, more recent wlw ships. ;)
> 
> Notes: I'm mostly ignoring comic canon in order to present my own version, so consider this just mildly AU if you're a comic fan. Eventually I'll catch back up and do a comic-compliant series.

It was 6am and the sun was late to rise.

Mid-continental sunrise was never something she enjoyed timing, especially on a tight schedule, but Buffy had backed herself into a corner, as usual. This time, it was a corner where she had control of a large pile of ash and a single vamp tied to a large light-pole that she could yank back into a shadowed position, should he choose to ignore her request for information. However, with the sun late to rise, she’d been put in the awkward position of threatening a burning with a sun that didn’t exist.

Of course, she could stake the vamp on the pole, and had done so with each of his three previous companions, but staking lacked the threatening _finesse_ of total sun obliteration. When you’re staking vamps all night long, five nights a week (she gave herself weekends off now- everyone needs ‘me’ time) things can get repetitive. No one else she knew was still maintaining their high school habits, but, then again, she didn’t know many other people who did this during high school. She shifted in her boots, stretching. If the sun didn’t get a move on and rise, she would just have to stake this bastard and get it over with. Work was starting soon.

“All right Fitch,” she sighed to her captive. “I guess it’s the wooden dildo death for you.”

“Wait! Wait! I swear I have more!” Fitch wiggled desperately at his bonds, but this always had the possibility of a deadly ‘splinter’ so he tried to keep his body off the pole, doing a not-great Magic Mike imitation…if it was also a Fifty Shades of Grey crossover.

“You’re a shitty stripper, so it better not be the butt moves you’re doing.” Pulling the stake from her thigh harness, she approached the tied vampire, stretching as she did so. Once you hit thirty, sitting in a cramped position on top of a warehouse parking lot all night long can get hard on the old glutes.

“No! No, please, don’t! The Council! The _Watcher_!” He arched his neck and bugged his eyes plaintively at her, but in vamp-face that was pretty much a futile effort. He just looked more vamped out.

Buffy snorted at him. “You do know they’re on our side, right? Got your white hats mixed up in the black hat contact list?”

“Not this one.” Fitch strained again, harder, eyes rolling wildly as he tried to glance behind him at the place where the sun would soon rise. “They’ve got a rogue agent…they haven’t told you-!”

“We don’t really talk.” She nudged him with one foot, casually noting that her boot laces were becoming rather frayed. _Fucking too old for H &M boots, should know by now_. “I’m in my 30s now, Fitch, I don’t call home that often.”

“A rogue agent!” He babbled again, nearly screaming. “Coming for you! The original slayers!”

“Original slayers?” Buffy smirked. “I think you mean good ol ‘despicable me’. There’s only one original-“ _Oh wait_ , she remembered, _Faith. That means me and Faith. Is she still around? Shit. I never updated my contacts, I’m as bad as Fitch._

Fitch had stuck on the same point. “Not just you, the other one, the dark slayer too,” he gasped, looking at the steadily increasing light with panic. “He wants both to set an _examplaaaaaaah_ -!”

But the rest was terminated in a singed scream. The sun had risen after all. Buffy was now contemplating a pile of grey ash where Fitch’s cheap suit and dirty face had been. She groaned, dusting ash off of her work jeans. This was what she got for playing slayer before her 7am shift. Normally she worked nights for just this reason, but she was covering Reza for having covered her the week before, and….The grocery store was good to her. She’d been there nearly five years now. Not many other options for a non-college graduate who never took to technology well and had few marketable skills.

On her way out of the parking garage where she’d chosen to bait the vamps, she unlocked her Acura with a beep, sliding behind the wheel with a prolonged complaint from her aching limbs. She had an hour before work, and with fifteen minutes to her house, she could probably fit in a quick shower. She had to feed the cat anyway. The car started with a roar and she did her usual jerky attempt at reversing, this time wth minimal damage to any neighboring cars. _Minimal_. Buffy had gotten better on the road over time, but she remained a careless California driver, even here in Cleveland, miles and years away from the desecrated remains of Sunnydale.

She drove home, mind half on her upcoming shift, half on slayer business as usual. She hadn’t seen Faith in at least three or four years. They got together a few times, the old Scooby gang, and by extension, Faith was sometimes invited, old grudges now long buried. The younger slayer was still one of the only people she could relate to, given their shared past of mistakes, missteps, and that one night…but they didn’t often talk. Some things, no matter how deeply understood, can’t be talked about. _I bet Angel knows where she is,_ Buffy wondered _. Or maybe Giles; they’re close. Dawn texted me yesterday and didn’t mention it, so she’s probably out of the loop, but I should check anyway… Better give Willow and Xander a call, while I’m at it, since I haven’t talked to them in a while._

‘A while’ in this case also translated to a few years a piece: two for Willow, four for Xander. Xander was married now, and his wife didn’t appreciate long-distance Skype with old high school female friends, no matter how platonic, and he wasn’t about to explain that they’d hunted demons together; she didn’t know and he wasn’t planning on ever telling her. It made sense, and besides, they didn’t have much in common these days. Xander owned a construction firm and made easily $130k a year: Buffy managed cashiers at a natural grocery chain. Willow was easier to talk with; at least, when she wasn’t spouting obscure prophecy and connected with the Great White Wiccan experience...but that was more and more the case these days. As with any other group, as time went on, it became harder to justify getting together when everyone had jobs, relationships, family troubles, etc.

Buffy spoke often with Giles and Dawn, because that was ‘family’ as far as she was concerned, but Willow and Xander had their own lives, and while it sometimes hurt to realize how far they’d drifted, it also sometimes helped remind Buffy of how far they’d come. Xander was in control of his life in a way that he would never have even had the _option_ of in high school, and Willow was more powerful than any of them, having turned from a shy wallflower to confident, absolute demi-goddess of all things Witchery with her own little following of groupies, and a rotating cast of ever-more-gorgeous lovers. It was only Buffy that felt left behind, felt less significant. In a world where slayers were born every day, and hunted vamps in teams with coordinated strike leaders and group texts…the original lone one was less of a beacon of hope, and more of an uncomfortable reminder of a failed past. Every young slayer respected the legend and the story of Buffy…but they had their own legends to write, and Buffy’s legend was her own to shoulder.

In the shower at her Spartan apartment, she looked down her body at the interlacing diamonds of scars that covered her from head to toe. No one single scar was individual to her anymore. Each was over-layer and bisected and otherwise blurred by another scar, and eventually, she knew, she would be just a mass of them. Walking and talking like a human being…nothing but old wounds inside. _I might be there already._ Shaking her head to kill the negative thinking, she finished her sudsing routine and rinsed, hissing as the hot water hit sensitive new bruises.

There was hardly time for work clothes and makeup, but Buffy hadn’t spent the last five years being super punctual, so it was completely in character to be a few minutes late for her shift. She didn’t even have to smell like the grave, this time. Still, something was bothering her even as she fed her cat and dashed out the door, and it wasn’t the prospect of being late. Something Fitch had said had stuck with her. _Why mention the Council, the Watchers?_ She wondered _. We made that truce years ago. They’re supposed to be helping guide the new girls overseas; Giles is all over it. Giles will probably know where to find Faith, and he might know more about this stupid ‘rogue agent’ bullshit, if it even exists._

Her shift was so utterly normal that she almost forgot about Fitch’s warning for a few hours. Customers of a natural grocery store had a lot of inane complaints, from free samples not being gluten-free, to use of palm oil in the complimentary massage area. Buffy put on her best ‘Joyce’ face and dealt with them in the no-nonsense, polite-but-firm style her mother had favored, back in the days when Buffy would do her homework and watch her in the gallery. The ‘Joyce’ face had carried her through a lot, just as her mother had, with grace and simplicity. Buffy felt like a poor imitation these days, but even a pale ghost was better than none at all. In the long years since her mother’s death, she’d learned that becoming her was, in its own way, a form of mourning.

On her mid-shift break, Buffy was contemplating her mother, her past and a lot of jumbled, messy thoughts when she caught a split second glance at a brunette in leather pants at the cosmetics counter. Faith? But no, when the girl turned she had blue eyes and a heart-shaped face, and nothing about her was angular, cat-like or darkly featured. Buffy realized she was picturing the girl Faith had been, not the woman she now was, and part of her wondered if leather pants and crop tops were still her thing. They certainly had been back in the bad old days, but people changed. She looked down at herself; her wardrobe now was less ‘I used to be a cheerleader’ and more ‘look at how many band t-shirts I can wear’. In her defense, work made her chose comfort over cardigans, far more often than not.

Thinking about Faith made her feel…uneasy. As always. Water was deep under the bridge now, for sure, but something about the other slayer perpetually filled her with guilt, and Buffy didn’t process guilt very well, thanks to her heavily-absent father (who used the old ‘gifts are a way of saying I’m Sorry’ tactic). Faith’s mistakes no longer made her angry; they just made her sad. There was so much she could have done to prevent the aftermath, even if she couldn’t have predicted or prevented the murder. She reacted poorly, Faith reacted worse, and the whole thing became a clusterfuck of lies and betrayal before either of them really knew what was happening. Stabbing someone doesn’t really do anything to displace messed-up emotions you may have attached to them; in some cases it just drives those emotions deeper inside, as if you were stabbing yourself. Buffy knew this all too intimately.

And of course, there was the _kiss_.

She hadn’t told anyone about it. The rough, desperate fondling up against a wall outside of the Bronze, the blur of lipstick and teeth dragging against her. The heat of Faith’s mouth and her tongue and a moan that Buffy couldn’t remember letting escape, searing into the night between them. Hands on her breasts, hips insistently parting her thighs, pushing against her with a squeak of leather and the rush of cheap drugstore perfume...

And then they were interrupted by a vamp, the fight turned into a brawl, and the moment went to dust with the ash in the alleyway. There had been exchanged glances. Dancing far too close. And Faith had wanted to go to Homecoming with her, and she had almost accepted. But the idea of Scott was safer, and the idea of Faith was dangerous, and back in those days, that was all there was to it. After being with Angel, she hadn’t wanted to invite danger back into her love life; her love life was supposed to be _normal_. But that of course, was never going to work. She knew that now. It was part of why she’d been nearly celibate for the better part of the last three years, after a few more failed flings, and a disastrous temporary relationship with a coworker, wherein Buffy realized ‘normal’ could also mean ‘supremely boring’, and she’d never looked back. Nowadays she knew what she wanted, and ‘normal’ didn’t cover it.

Of course, also, even if she had been able to properly name and categorize her feelings for her fellow slayer back then, there had been the little matter of the murder, and then Faith’s betrayal, and then the subsequent ‘duel-to-the-death’ mentality that they’d both embraced, rather than talking things out. It was how things were back then, in the days where the end of the world was always just around the corner and there was no time to be psychoanalyst about your weird crush on the mysterious woman who taunted and flustered you, even while you were trying to kill her.

No one and _nothing_ , she was ashamed to admit, even to herself, had lit her fire like that one kiss up against a wall almost twenty years ago. Not Angel, not Spike...certainly not Riley, or the various imitators that she had flirted around with over the years. She chalked it up to unfulfilled fantasy, and to soothe her regrets, she had sometimes slept around with other women, which was always fun and had the spark of novelty, but it wasn’t quite the same. There was never that screaming rush in her insides, never that same lusty drive. To conquer and be conquered, to claim and be claimed. Something only a slayer could know, and another slayer could answer.

So seeing Faith, that had its complications. They were friends now, old friends, who had a past long behind them, and scars that didn’t ache anymore; they were just scars. Being guilty around Faith, that was understandable, but having that guilty desire around her…that was less fun. She’d never fully intimated her feelings to the other slayer, either, and that just meant Faith usually took Buffy’s brooding as more anger directed at her, which only made the brunette fidgety and over-apologetic. Buffy couldn’t handle that. She wasn’t looking for more apologies…she was looking for that moment back, and she didn’t know how to ask for it. It wasn’t something you could feasibly ask for, especially with someone who probably didn’t have the same nuanced emotions over it that you did. Faith had always been confidently open with her bisexuality, and Buffy was there now as an adult, but discussing old attractions was just not something they did when they got together. In fact, any conversation that turned to the past was usually followed with cringing and recriminations on both sides, so they tended to avoid it, which meant that they also never really talked about the kiss.

There had been a chance, once, on the bus as they road-tripped across the country, away from the crater that had been Sunnydale. There had been a coyote-hot night in New Mexico, where Faith was driving and Buffy was helping to keep her up; gnawing on some stale Red Vines and quizzing her fellow slayer on actual prison etiquette compared to movies. There was laughter, and stupid license plate games, and finally, in the dusk of the early morning, Faith had grown quiet with some contemplative thought, but her eyes were shooting little lasers at Buffy every five minutes, and Buffy knew: now was the time to ask her about the kiss. It was clear, rising just like the upcoming sun, but she couldn’t do it. She chickened out. After battling untold armies of ubervamps and primal monster, she was too afraid to open the hellgate that would lead to possibly kissing Faith again. She didn’t know if there was any chance anymore, or if that chance was even what she wanted, or even a good idea, or a million other screeching, murmuring concerns…so she left it, and her second chance disappeared with the golden rays of sunrise and the yawning approach of Giles, coming to take Faith’s shift behind the wheel.

She shook herself from old memories as the end of her shift neared and the usual pace of her work ramped up to accommodate afternoon customers. The worker’s lunch rush had ended and she was anticipating the beginning of the what-do-I-want-for-dinner crowd, when another blot of wavy brown hair caught her eye, but only for a split second: she was helping two new trainees count their tills and it was crucial to keep a close watch on their math, since the store didn’t have the most updated hand-count system. She didn’t have time to look up again until a moment later, but the dark-haired woman was on her way out the door, face obscured by the cheery welcoming chalkboard signs. If there was something familiar about her, Buffy couldn’t trace it, and she wasn’t thinking about it as she congratulated her new cashiers on their good work and made idle conversation with them as they clocked out. Gathering her things, she spied her iPhone and quickly jotted out a text to Giles: _hey old grump, just checking in to see if you’ve heard from Faith in a while, love/miss u_

She heard her phone ping back as she started out the back entrance for her car, which was surprising: Giles usually never responded quickly, confounded as he was by the touch screen. She hauled her purse up and started digging through it for her phone, cursing herself for not just sliding it into her pocket, when the smell of tobacco smoke drifted acridly to her nose, and she looked up to see a familiar figure leaning against her Acura, stubbing out a cigarette with lupine grace.

Faith rose to greet her, and that devil’s smile played on her red lips. “Hey there, B. Miss me?”


End file.
